Bazaars are a traditional element in the lives of many people, particularly in countries of Arab background. The concept of bazaar is also strongly related to the souq, which is a market in an Arab city. A first glance at the bazaar shows a decidedly commercial nature and spatial organization, where similar activities tend to cluster: industrial workshops, eating areas, fabric tradesmen, all formed nuclei of activitiy, or actions, in which the visitor could orientate themselves even if they had never visited a particular bazaar before.

What makes a bazaar different than a shopping centre? Following Khansari and Yavari, there are at least 2 main differences:

1. In shopping centres, the manufacturing process is gone. It is just a place for trading. There is no connection to the process of making the finished items that are to be sold, and there is no chance of experiencing this process. From The Persian Bazaar: veiled space of desire, I extract:

“Bazaars were noisy; some, like the streets of metalworkers, were overwhelming with the sounds reverberating on walls and vaults, so noisy in fact that in recent times apprentices were moved into open spaces around bazaars for the loudest operations affecting metals. Noises do not appear in photographs, but dust does, and all bazaars were filled with particles of work, the sawdust of woodworkers or the threads of textiles, mixed with the dust of architecture and of endlessly shuffling feet. This dust is like a veil which covers the visitor or like the filter through which he reaches whatever he sought, the object of his desires. And to the dust must be added odors, the sweet smells of candies and pastries, the rich scents of endless perfumes, the rough smell of leather or of paint, the hard odors of working bodies making things or carrying them around.

Making things was not simply a technical activity now gone from shopping centers, it was a continuous sensory experience for the eyes, the nose, the ears, at times the taste buds and even touch. That experience could be exhilarating and attractive or repulsive and depressing. But, when compared to the aseptic quality of our shopping malls, it always was a profoundly human experience…”

Marrakech Souq

2. The other difference comes from architecture. As opposed to modern shopping centres made for easy digestion with shiny glass and polished floors (Rosengård Centrum?),

The architecture of the bazaar was an experience of discovery, it created a mystery in which both men and things played a strange role, only partly defined through their specific function of selling and making or of buying and waiting to be bought. By its skillful manipulation of light and of built surfaces, this architecture sought to attract and to fascinate. Together with the noises, the smells, and the visual festival of colorful items on display, it proclaimed the complexity of life and something of its illusory quality. Everything may be possible and available, but perhaps nothing is real.

In the bazaar, we can distinguish 3 elements:

– Action: it is the space, the bazaar presenting itself as a set of possibilities in the horizon.

– Reaction: it is what people do in the bazaar. It is worth mentioning that reactions to bazaars are highly personalized and temporary. Going to a bazaar can very well be a completely different experience if the visit takes place at a different time of the day or year. Again, it would appear that the action is merely to shop, but as anybody who has visited this kind of street markets know, there are a number of invisible actions too: smelling, seeing, thinking, navigating… and they all conform one single, yet multilayered architectural and sensorial landscape.

– Production: it is the experience of going to a bazaar. Among a myriad other things, “the souq was a place where people could come and talk, or sit down to tell stories.” It is not the same to walk across a bazaar when it is open and working, than when it is closed at night and it’s just a transit space. The production always has a psychological and emotional element, for it is an experience in itself. The lines of flight take a different meaning each time.

Demolishing a building can be seen as a desperate act: such a thing is only carried out when all other resources have been (apparently) exhausted. It is a way of renouncing faith in a community, not to mention the economical cost of bringing down and building again, but as Talking Cities (Birkhäuser, 2006) puts it, “the value of housing is linked to the amount of thought -not the amount of funds- invested in its design.”

When it comes to housing projects, working with the existing (as opposed to whiping out and starting all over again) means transforming and colaborating while at the same time offering the chance to take an exit from the current path, towards previously-unthought roads.